Author: Lexie

I really wanted to approach this brief with as much experiments as I could so I could test my limits. For me – painting is already a bit out of my comfort zone so I am usually very critical when I even attempt to “paint”. I really sat down and thought about my surfaces and what I thought painting was.

For my first piece I mangled up the paper and then used a dry brush to bring out all the texture I made. After experimenting a bit I noticed I really liked holding this piece up to the sun and having the light change the colours.

For this piece I wanted to play around with what I could use as a “brush”. I folded the paper again to create texture and then used an empty paper towel roll to paint my canvas. I used the round bit to create circles then the sides of the roll to smear the paint across and highlight the texture.

My third piece I dont feel is complete. I think in the making of this piece I got ideas for a later piece and ended up neglecting this one a bit. I used water colours to create these orbs representing leaves then sprayed the paper with water to try and soften out the colours and see how the paint moved within the paper. Then I thought about what I could use to create some structure within the composition and I decided to try out some embroidery. I have never really worked with embroidering so it was a fun experiment which led to a later piece.

My fourth piece was another experiment – I wanted to see how I could manipulate the paint while it was still wet and create the texture with the paint itself. I put cling wrap overtop of wet paint and scrunched it around a bit to create this texture.

Work #5 includes a lot of the elements used in the previous works. I created this texture within the paper and added dimension with dry brushing, I sprayed the paper with water to move the paint around even more, and I ripped it apart and wanted to reconnect it using my embroidery thread.

When I first got this brief I was really excited to start working because I thought I could achieve the ideas I had in my head. After a numerous amount of attempts with the methods we learned in class I decided to do some independent research to achieve something that reflected my thought process better.

Essential Oils

During my research I found a method of using essential oils as a transfer medium. The process was similar to the others – lay your image face down and rub oils over the back gently to move the image over. This method wasn’t the clearest transfer but it gave the images a warped almost melted look. Using oil also gave a halo effect around where I was doing my transfers.

Acrylic Paint

I used acrylic paint as well to transfer. Using the paint added some colour to my work and created a bit of depth where my colours blended. I chose to use paint that reflected the colours I used in my transfers.

transfer art

Mikhael Subotzky

Mikhael Subotzky’s art includes multiple mediums and he connects them together with a transferring process. Subotzky’s work mixes these political and historical narratives with himself and highlighted a disconnect of what is presented and what is “hidden”. 

 “At the heart of my work is a fixation with revealing the gap between what is presented (and idealised) and what is hidden, coupled with a desire to pull apart and reassemble the schizophrenia of contemporary existence…” – Mikhael Subotzky for FotoFilmic

When I first started my transferring I tried out Subotzky’s usual method of using clear packing tape. Honestly, as much as I enjoyed Subotzky’s art – I absolutely hated this method of transferring images for my own art. 

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg uses his art to recycle American history and create these fictional alternative storylines. By combining printed media with his own paintings he combines the two elements to make these dream-like images. 

Rauschenberg transferred his images by placing an image face down and going over the back with hatch marks until the printed images meld with the paper. 

works cited

mikhael-subotzky-masterclass

https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/lightboxes/transfer-drawings

Allan McCollum and Sol LeWitt

ALLAN MCCOLLUM

Alllan McCollum’s example of iterative work within his work “The Shapes Project” shows extreme dedication and loyalty to his craft. “The Shapes Project” is an ongoing series where McCollum assigns a unique shape to every human on Earth. So roughly 9.5 billion souls are being represented with these simple but abstract forms on mediums such as paper, copper cookie cutters, and wood. By changing the colors and positionings McCollum begins to humanize these forms. I can’t even begin to fathom the amount of commitment this project takes – just dedicating minutes, days, and years to work on one single project. McCollum states the project itself is too massive to complete within his lifetime and hopes that it will continue even after he’s gone. 

Personally, I like the idea of humans being represented as individual funky shapes and when you see the images of the work he has completed already you begin to imagine how wildly big our population size is. 

SOL LEWITT

Sol Lewitt demonstrates iteration often in his wall drawings. Lewitt has these massive displays of intricate linework spanning entire walls. The structure of his work seems very precise and intentional so I wasn’t surprised to read that Lewitt used to be an architect. Lewitt’s line work follows the idea of conceptualism and includes instructions on how to create it for themselves. Believing that the artist’s idea was the art, Lewitt created these “blueprints” for others to interpret and create their own work. Throughout my research I found a lot of instructions on how to create Lewitt’s line work and other work inspired by him. I like the concept of the art being the ideas and the process, not necessarily the execution. I feel like Lewitt made art and ideas for the engineers and mathematicians – showing that you can use logic and instructions to be creative.  

Because of how Lewitt left instructions with his work – the art is still being created today and lives on after him.  

Here is some work that I found while researching that was inspired by Sol LeWitt

https://www.harrywei.com/filter/Waterloo/Sol-Lewitt-Chairs

Works Cited

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/allan-mccollum-petzel-galler-new-york

http://allanmccollum.net/amcnet2/album/shapes/intro.html

Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective

http://www.artnet.com/artists/sol-lewitt/

https://publicdelivery.org/sol-lewitt-wall-drawings/

On Tuesday we were assigned smaller groups and given the assignment to create a collaborative work of art together. We were all completely separated and communicating online which I think helped us decide on what to work on. As we all sat on our own we felt isolated and disconnected. I think after the last year or so we have all become familiar with the feeling of isolation…and it means something different to everyone. In our small group we discussed how for some it was a positive experience and for others it was negative. We could all connect by one word but it also brought completely different feelings for each of us.

We wanted to connect all of our art through the same theme but be able to see where our differences lie. After our discussion we landed on creating this cut-away dollhouse-like structure where we could fill a room with what isolation meant to us. As we have all been in the same boat..same house..same planet for this pandemic – but it has still been an individual experience. .

It took me quite a while to think about what I wanted to do for this project of iteration. As a photographer I tend to get a lot of my inspiration for art from nature and organic elements and I wanted to incorporate that into this project. I initially decided to stamp a leaf until my entire page was filled, but once I finished my stamping I was really interested with the lines the stems created. I just kept looking into the work and finding different textures and patterns. From that I decided to take some photographs of the work and begin to layer it on top of itself to see what else I could create.

Initially, I liked the idea of displaying iteration in my work by the repeation of using the same leaf to create one image but the end product of that really pushed me to keep layering and creating more textures and scenes within the ink. Also by changing the format and starting to work digitally by stamping photographs over I was using the same process I started with – even after the leaf I used in the beginning had withered away.